This poem arose this day from the comment of a friend who did not see hope where I saw some, and yet he still hopes. As a poet, I often see humanity in an epic struggle between cynicism and hope. Hell is where hope is abandoned, to allude to Dante. Heaven is where hope flourishes. As John Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher and author, wrote famously in his play, No Exit, “Hell is other people.” Know argument here. Of course, I wholed to the other half of truth, as well: Heaven is other people. Solidarity trumps alienation. Hope is the better portion of reality, that mother that teaches us sow much. Those caught in the mine of this earth may argue quite rationally that hope is the leanest in the efface of the meanest. Still, hope strikes me as both the lightest and most profound portion in the efface of darkness. Life and death. Heaven and Hell. Hope and cynicism. Who dares dance in their mist? Many people at most times choose to fight over merely what they halve — that is given. Fortunately, we don’t have to live in most times. We only have to live in the present. Let hope be the present.

In Greek and Roman mythology, the Gordian knot was an extremely complicated knot tied by Gordius, the king of Phrygia in Asia Minor. Located in the city of Gordium, the knot came to symbolize a difficult problem that was almost impossible to solve.

According to legend, Gordius was a peasant who married the fertility goddess Cybele. When Gordius became king of Phrygia, he dedicated his chariot to Zeus and fastened it to a pole with the Gordian knot. Although the knot was supposedly impossible to unravel, an oracle predicted that it would be untied by the future king of Asia.

Many individuals came to Gordium to try to undo the knot, but they all failed. Then, according to tradition, the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great visited the city in 333 B . C . After searching unsuccessfully for the hidden ends of the Gordian knot, Alexander became impatient. In an unexpected move, he took out his sword and cut through the knot. Alexander then went on to conquer Asia, thus fulfilling the oracle’s prophecy. Alexander’s solution to the problem led to the saying, “cutting the Gordian knot,” which means solving a complicated problem through bold action.

May you live in the won reality where everything is knot as it seams.

Check Out These Cool RELATED POSTS:

POEM: Subconscious Not What You ThinkDon't bother pondering the subconscious
It's not what you think
This funny poem is a reminder that much of what is life is not directly accessible by us. Most of what goes ...

POEM: Getting Your Ducks in a RowI once put all my ducks in a row
Only then realizing
What am I doing with all these ducks?!
Getting one's ducks in a row is an idiom or metaphor that most people are ...

POEM: Metings, I’d Rather Do WithoutI listen
To that which speaks
A bigger
In feeleds of dreams
Wanting more
Then words
Aloft from fences
Of unsatisfying breadth
And stealy calculation
Dis passionate ...

POEM: Dream CatcherA daze work
Over
Come
Bye sleep
Sow few dream catchers
Sow many dreams
And that's the catch
This poem is about work, vocation, passion, and burnout. This poem is ...

This poem is a tribute to apologists for evil everywhere. The lesser of two evils rationalization is perhaps the all-time most popular moral shortcut. Unfortunately, when evil is embraced, morality is cut loose. The “necessity” defense is actually an abnegation of moral agency altogether, pretending that no choice exists. Of course, where there is no choice, there is no morality, or perhaps more conveniently, no immorality. So much for freedom marching on! For you can’t have freedom without its twin: responsibility, that bully big brother. Ultimately, one’s own responsibility is morphed out of existence into an other’s accountability. He “made me” do it. As we become an impersonal — and amoral — force for precious accountability, we polish a veneer of morality, all the wile avoiding personal responsibility for our own actions. Most simply put, we become mirrorly a consequence of evil, our moral agency be dammed! We become an effect of evil rather than a cause for good. Morality necessarily involves restraint, the project of limiting our choices, hopefully to good choices, among all possible choices. The key point is that it focuses on self-restraint, not other-restraint. This shift of focus on accountability of others, presumably punishing evil, is classical psychological projection of one’s own shadow, dark side, evil onto an other. No doubt, evil happens. No doubt, evil costs dearly. Projecting all responsibility onto others serves the convenient purpose of shifting the cost away from our own costly choices. No doubt, morality is costly — just as evil is. Enduring these costs is the stuff of a moral life. This is the price of true freedom. Evil runs over the good for evil ends, for its own sake. Good revels in the good for its own sake, and somewhat paradoxically, lifts up, invites true freedom for others’ sake as well Half of the moral life is the willingness to live into what we know to be good. Half of the moral life is enduring the inescapable effects of evil, what we no to be evil. Only God knows the half-life of evil. While it may be a truism that we do not get out of this life alive, we can live more than a half-life. May you live fully! Moral choices may be unclear. Moral choices may be extraordinarily difficult. Still, moral choices are always a choice. To deny this is the paltry heights of amorality and a brutal equivalency of evil with good.

May you find wide-open love stronger than shadowy hate in your life.

Check Out These Cool RELATED POSTS:

POLITICAL POEM: Buy Partisan ShipIf you knot for me
You agin
Me
Oh my
They would halve US
Believe
In a New York minute
Weather 60 second ads
Or master debating in public
For ours
To won party
Or buy ...

POEM: Tracing HumanityTracing Humanity
They say that
You can tell
A lot
About a person
By what they do
This, of course, is on track
Still, there is a better weigh
The difference between animals ...

POEM: Ode Record SmashedHe smashed
His ode record
Broke in
The same oh
Same oh!
Skipping
A beat
Down
Sow deep
In his sole
Feted
To follow him
Wear ever
Won is
I wrote this poem as the ...

POEM: Awe The LessI woke up
Knot a moment too soon
My values dying on the vine
Just realizing
In efface of
Every dollar
Unspent
Awe the less
I had to urn
And in that mean time
Aaah, lined ...

Support the Police, Beat Yourself UpSupport the Police Beat Yourself Up - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON
Support the Police Beat Yourself Up - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON
This cool design is linked to a button, but other ...

The defense department denies killing civiliansThe state department denies human rights abuses by trade partnersThe department of energy denies that nuclear power is anything but safeThe criminal justice system denies institutional racismThe department of departments denies that it existsThere is no news hereAn anonymous spokesman representing an undisclosed list of clientsCould neither confirm nor deny their uselessnessBeholden to flights of fancyCarry onPink elephants trampling conspiracy theoristsStraw men unable to eat crowPermitting no one to fly straightBarring exceptional porkThe fun is overA barrelOf monkeys denying evolutionWhere GOP is a measle-y typoRead “take things literally”A premeditated shot in the darkWhere there is no higher powerEmanating from the chamber of commercePinko pachyderms never herd fromAny rarer would be bloodyHell, the stakes are highRaised by vampiresUnable to reflect on their ownFratricide from dawn to dustSucking out the lifeGranting only thatThey feel our payin’AttentionExacting compensation for every noticeDispatching captives with unmanned missivesDroning onIn their priest-like dutiesUntil the masses are freeLike a cancerAn endless growthOf pulp fictionAnd mind-numbing doublespeakAs we press releaseFrom labor campsYet anotherBirth of a nationAnd its following deportments:REDACTEDCensors monitoring your every moveSo your posterity is theirsAnd the war on terrorOnly coming to an endWhen know moreFreedom to deny

Check Out These Cool RELATED POSTS:

POEM: Sew Your FrayedFear takes you
Too the toil it
For those privy to life
If you have years, listen
Courage makes you
What sow ever the seasoning
Spring dew
Or winter flakes
You knead not ...

POEM: Silver BulletsBeware of cellars of silver bullets
Proffering too for won buys
As wear wolves clothing
In the face
Of murder-suicide
Know if, and, or butt
Totally transmogrifying
In a ...

POEM: Amateurs and ProseThere are moments
When I feel
Like such an amateur
Then the payments come
So much more
Than I could ever hope for
The only falling short
Is ever thinking
That life
Is ...

POEM: Wrenching MachineHe threw himself into his work
Like a wrench
More than just
A gag
In a wrenching machine
Here is a Monday poem dedicated to all anti-work workers, those less-than-willing ...

POEM: Mad HappyWell
I never
Happy to be mad
Mad too be happy
This might be crazy
That maybe fitting
Ante this and ante that
Given fighting chance
And unbelievable odds
Of uncounted to ...

POEM: NamasteWho dares ax
Why I am
Sow meta for
As the spear it in me
Razes up
Too meat the spirit in you
This poem is an ode to my favorite version of the greeting "namaste:" may the ...

Cameras, cameras everywhereYet what do they survey?Eyes, eyes everywhereYet few can see the way

Big brother is here. Whether it is surveillance cameras, web or cell tracking, financial transactions or legal documents, you are being watched. Watched as a potential consumer, your ultimate value. Watched as a potential criminal, threatening polite consumer culture. Live truly free. Hopefully, you will be truly seen.

Check Out These Cool RELATED POSTS:

POEM: Eminently Bad BusinessSome might suggest that we run everything like a business
This is eminently bad business
The notion that everything should be run like a business runs like a disease through ...

POEM: CensorshipThe worst thing about censorship is
This short, one-line poem could be mistaken for half a poem. This poem may leave the reader wondering what I, the author, consider to be ...

POEM: A Lousy Take on Lao-TseA Lousy Take on Lao-Tse (Tao Te Ching 38)
When Tao is lost
There is virtue
When virtue is lost
There is morality
When morality is lost
There is propriety
Yet oddly
Even ...

POEM: UnleashedAs anger and grief morphs
Into the habits and vagaries of daily life
The heart is circled by its waggin's
In loo of revolutions more roil
As if
Too be stuck
In
The ...

POEM: She CameShe came down the street
With such a scowl
Such a deep...
Well...
One-couldn't-imagine demeanor
Her whole body
Like a wrecking ball
Laying waste
To awe before ...

POEM: Seriously?!The Zen master was nearly
Finished with his instruction
When he got to non-seriousness
I was greatly relieved
For I was taking nothing
He was saying
Seriously
This short ...

My life is generally at a pretty relaxed pace, and with this I have no complaints. However, when I look at the state of the world, it seems that we are amidst an excruciatingly long process characterized by a big dose of denial and a shockingly resilient lack of self-awareness on the way to a place I’m sure that not very many people actually want to go. I like the China reference in the slow boat to China phrase, because the conventional wisdom seems to be that the Chinese culture and economy is a juggernaut, not a particularly desirable one, but probably one that has to be emulated in the race to the bottom. And, as they say: “If you keep going the same direction, you’ll end up where you’re headed.” In the battle to maintain a positive consciousness in what seems to be a herd of lemmings heading toward a cliff, occasionally this experience fits the old war adage: hours of boredom punctuated by sheer terror. However, when the terror and torture hits, it is increasingly in the states, both blue and red (also states of mind), as opposed to overseas. For what we send out into the world eventually comes home to roost. Unfortunately, terror is a brother to fascism (though I am not sure which one is the big brother). So, how does one cope when waterboarding comes to America? I’m guessing that the answer involves more than just surfing the internet…

Check Out These Cool RELATED POSTS:

POEM: Sea of LoveI was lost
In a sea of love
Only to find my way back
To this world
Look in my eyes and sea
All that I have
For you
Love is a vast place; one of those places where you can ...

War Travels By Night and BidetWar Travels By Night and Bidet-FUNNY ANTI-WAR BUTTON
War Travels By Night and Bidet-FUNNY ANTI-WAR BUTTON
This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun ...

I am finally uploaded a new batch of Occupy Wall Street designs. This batch of 125 political designs is mostly Occupy Wall Street designs, but there are also a large series of “stop socialism” designs, a large series of Fox news parodies, and a new line of designs: vegetarian. I still have hundreds of other designs made that I still need to upload, so stay tuned.

The designs below are linked to button products, but each of these designs is available in all of Top Pun’s products such as T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, magnets, key chains, sticker sheets, posters, and caps.

If you like what you see, you can check out all of my political designs, which also include more Occupy Wall Street related designs.

POEM: Changing KingsWhen I was a child
I crapped in my pants
Today I am a king in the world
Now I make others crap in their pants
This is the indigestible truth
Of too much power
That cannot be ...

ELECTION POEM: Democracy Takes A DiveLike that
Mourning do
After a cold night
Looking over
That nasty bluff
When the populace says jump
As if
Only culpable
Sane
How high
Falling for everything
Accept ...

POEM: I Went AWOLOne day
I went
AWOL
A
Well
Ordered
Life
I'm not sure
If anyone noticed
If they did
Judging me
By my backside
I would be too
Looking forward
Mirrorly suggestive
Of ...

Top Pun’s Official Blog

Top Pun's mission is to maximize prophets. Top Pun creates serious, funny, and seriously funny peace and justice designs which are available on your choice of
products such as buttons, T-shirts, and bumper stickers. Top Pun blogs to highlight additional facets of his word artistry such as pun-filled poetry and funny political satire, free posters, as well as political actions of local and global importance. Top Pun's serious playfulness ever reminds us that justice is no yoke, and the pun is mightier than the sword!